Central Email Archiving and Retention Services

OIT offers a central email archiving service, based on Google’s Postini Message Discovery service, initially to a group of NC State employees who have certain employee class codes (see table below).

As a state employee, you are legally required to archive all your work-related email:

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Legal requirements for archiving (all state employees)

The North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. 132-1) requires that you, as a state employee, maintain copies of all work-related electronic records, including work-related email of a non-transient nature, that:

  • You send through any email system to recipients inside and outside the university.
  • You automatically forward to another address.
  • You receive from external sources.

These work-related email messages:

  • Are public records.
  • Are the property of the people of North Carolina.
  • Must be presented upon request (e.g., subpoena or court order but not a request from the general public).
  • May not be deleted, altered, or disposed of except in accordance with the University General Records Retention and Disposition Schedule (PDF) and optional unit-specific addenda.

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Other archiving requirements

Certain external, grant-funded projects or similar work may require archiving longer than seven years. If this applies to you, then you will need to archive your email yourself. Some possibilities are:

  • Use a generic account (see Web Registry - Google Generic Account for details).
  • Use an IMAP email client and store your messages offline.
  • Use your personal Gmail archive (25 GB).

For guidance about the additional email archiving strategy that would work best for you, contact your departmental IT personnel.

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What the central archive contains

Current archive contents

  • All email (except spam and viruses-infested messages) that has been routed
  • All email to or from campus GroupWise users prior to August 9, 2010, EXCEPT messages that previously had been:
    • deleted or
    • corrupted in GroupWise

Planned additions to the archive

Email sent or received prior to August 9, 2010, that is in the following categories:

  • Contained in GroupWise-controlled archives
  • Unity/Cryus email
  • Locally stored email

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Employee class codes with central archiving accounts

If your employee class code is listed in the table below, you will be given a central archiving account and the central service will handle your email as described in the sections below. If you do not know your employee class code:

  1. Go to SysNews.
  2. Log in to WRAP if you have not already done so.
  3. In the User Info section (top left corner of the page), click on Account Information.
  4. In the Email Information section, under Google/Postini Settings, you will find your Employee Class and code.
Employee
Class Code		 Description
1 SPA
2 EPA
3 County EPA
4 Post Docs
5 Law Enforcement Officers
8 9E County Oper Suppt Srvcs (COSS)

Meeting your archiving requirements

  • If you are an employee with an archiving account:
    • The easiest way to fulfill your legal retention responsibility is to always generate and receive work-related email in your campus email account, where Postini will automatically archive it.
    • If you generate work-related email in any other account, you can fulfill your responsibility for retention by simply forwarding a copy of it to your Google Apps account, where it will be archived.
  • If you are NOT an employee with an archiving account (your employee class code is not in the table above):
    • Your email will not be archived through the central system at this time.
    • You will need to to proactively retain all your work-related email in accordance with the legal requirements for archiving summarized above.

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Features of your email archive

How the system archives your messages

  • The system will archive all messages, including both work-related and personal, that you send or receive through the central system. See also Privacy of your archive below.
  • In general, messages, including automatic forwards, are archived as soon as you send them and before they reach the recipient's inbox.
    Exception    : Intra-GroupWise messages are batched and archived only once a day. The time it takes to archive will depend on the number of messages. When the process is finished, you will be able to access these messages in the archive.
  • Messages will be kept in the central archive as follows:
    • Those archived prior to September 1, 2012, will be kept for 10 years.
    • Those archived on and after September 1, 2012, will be kept for 7 years.
  • Messages will include attachments.
  • None of the messages you send or receive through other email systems on campus will be archived with this service. However, you are responsible for archiving all your work-related email that passes through those systems. See:

How you can use your archive

  • You can search messages by date, subject, message body and more.
  • You can restore messages from the archive to your inbox. For example, if you accidentally delete an email message from both your inbox and trash, you can copy it from the archive. If you are a GroupWise user, you won't be able to delete a message from your trash until after it has been archived.
  • There is no storage limit on your archive.
  • The archiving system does not affect the way you read your email.

Limitations on your archive

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Access  to your archive

The only persons who can access your archived email are:

  • You
  • Office of General Counsel or Human Resources personnel (only if copies of your emails were requested for e-discovery or in connection with an HR action). In this case none of your personal (non-work-related) email would be copied.
  • Your manager (only as allowed by Computer Use Regulation 08.00.2This link will open in a new window, section 2.7).

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Privacy of your archive

  • NC State computer use regulations do allow limited personal use of campus computing resources, including email.
  • Personal email, even that handled and archived by the campus email systems, is not a public record and cannot be searched by the public.
  • Privacy laws prohibit access to your personal (non-work-related) email. It will not be included in any request for your work-related email.
  • To ensure your privacy and avoid archiving personal correspondence, do not send or receive any personal email through the campus email systems.

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Older email

OIT's first priority is to archive email messages sent and received after the central email archiving service was activated.  OIT is actively seeking the best way to archive your existing historical email and will notify you when this process is ready to begin.

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Getting started in your archive

When the central archive service is activated, you will receive an email notifying you that an archiving account has been set up for you.  To begin using it, see Getting Started with Email Archiving.

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Additional information

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Created: Tue, 06/08/2010 - 11:56, Last Updated: Mon, 08/27/2012 - 09:25
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